Page 29 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Lysithea

G reat. A game of supernatural truth or dare, only the dare part is off the table, and that’s the part I would rather play.

The silence stretches, thick and expectant. I’m not saying a fucking word. My secrets are my own, carved into me long before they etched their brand on my back. They can pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Dathan scoffs, a sound that is all arrogance and boredom. “Fine. I’ll break the ice.”

He steps into the centre of the chamber and takes the book from Evren.

He closes his eyes, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face. “I’m scared,” he says quietly. “I’m feeding myself with my own fear over losing the one woman I know I can get close to.”

I gulp back the cascade of emotions that crash over me, but I don’t say a word. He has no right to feel that way about me. He puts me in danger every time he gets close enough to feed from me. And the flip side is, I do the same to him.

The book vibrates and then flies out of his hands, aiming for me at a rate of knots. Instinctively, I reach up and grab it before it hits me in the face.

The leather is cold and dry, a dead thing clinging to my skin. I try to pass it to Evren, but my fingers won’t uncurl. It’s stuck to me, an extension of my own flesh. The book wants its price.

“No,” I say, the word a weak protest in the oppressive silence.

The rhythmic pounding from below starts again, a slow, hungry beat that vibrates up my legs. The walls shimmer, the darkness presses in.

“It’s your turn, Siren,” Verik says, his voice devoid of its usual mockery.

Their eyes are on me.

My throat is tight. The secret is a shard of glass I’ve held on my tongue for years. To speak it is to bleed.

The book grows heavier. The pounding gets louder.

“I killed someone who got too close,” I whisper, the words cracking. The memory flashes behind my eyes. Jenson’s face, contorted in agony. “During sex.”

The confession hangs in the air, a raw, ugly thing. The truth of me.

The book heats up, a searing pain, then releases me. It flies from my grasp, spinning through the air until it hovers in front of Verik.

No one speaks. The weight of my secret has replaced the pressure in the room. They know now. They know what I am. A monster who destroys the things she touches.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Dathan says, moving in closer to me. “Why you fear getting close to anyone.”

“Shut up,” I snap. “You don’t get to psychoanalyse me.”

“Jenson Gruft,” Verik says. “I heard rumours that he died suddenly, even though we were told he left the academy.”

“Blackgrove wanted to keep it quiet.”

“Blackgrove knows?” Dathan asks, the incredulity in his voice is hard to ignore.

“Of course he knows,” I grit out. “Jenson died while we were fucking. That’s kind of hard to cover up to the creature who knows everything!” I shove my hands into my hair and crouch down. This is a nightmare. An actual fucking nightmare. I never wanted to rehash this. Why is the book doing this?

“Your scream of pleasure killed him,” Verik says, crouching next to me. He doesn’t touch me, and that makes him smart, or he’d lose a fucking hand.

“Still want to get between my legs?” I growl.

He smirks in the orb light. “More than ever. I want to be the man you don’t kill.”

“You are stupid then,” I hiss. “Or too fucking horny for your own good.”

“Maybe both. But I have a theory, Regina .”

Queen. How dare he? I am nobody's queen. “Oh? And what’s that?”

“The bond will save us.”

His simple statement hits me hard enough to take my breath away. Is he right? Will this fucking brand save them? “It changes nothing,” I spit out. “Thinking about all of your hands on me makes me want to vomit.”

“Liar,” Dathan says. “You let me touch you.”

My gaze snaps to his in fury. I rise. “That was different.”

“Why was it?”

“You seduced me.”

“Did I? That’s news to me.”

I clench my jaw so tightly, I give myself a headache. He’s right. I am lying. My body is betraying me with them, and I loathe myself. I don’t want to want them. “I’ve given the book what it wanted. Your fucking turn,” I glare at Verik, who straightens up and grabs the book.

He meets my glare, his smirk a fixed, infuriating line. “Fair’s fair,” he says, his voice a low rumble. He holds the book, his gaze dropping to the blank cover. The hellfire orb casts flickering shadows across his face, making his expression hard to read.

“My home is burning,” he says, the words clipped, devoid of emotion.

“My family, the architects of a whole realm, are losing a war they started. The rebels are tearing it apart, brick by brick.” He looks up, his hellfire eyes boring into mine.

“I was sent here to get strong enough to go back and burn them all to the ground. The Midnight Soul Scar was also the purpose. It took three years to find the right conduit. You.” His gaze meets mine again.

“I go back home with the power of a god, I take back what is being stolen from us.”

The brand on my back burns, a sharp, searing pain.

The book slips from his fingers, drifting through the air until it hovers before the last of them.

It stops in front of Evren.

The silence that falls is different. Colder. Deeper. We’ve all bled our truths onto the stone floor. Now it’s the turn of the man who doesn’t speak. The man who died and came back to life.

Evren reaches for the book. It floats into his hands, a willing accomplice. His face is a blank canvas of bone-white skin, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the tome. How can he give a truth he can’t speak? He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He chokes on it, and my heart lurches.

“Write it down,” I whisper.

He shakes his head. He knows as well as I do that it won’t count.

“Hell dimension,” he whispers, loud enough to be construed as the spoken word, quiet enough that I barely hear him.

I move closer. He avoids my gaze.

“Tortured. Pain. Cut out my tongue.”

“What?” I blurt out and then wish I hadn’t.

His face contorts, and I feel a wave of nausea wash over me.

“That’s why you don’t speak,” Verik says, his lack of tact truly the worst thing ever right now.

Evren glares at him but says nothing.

“Shit,” Dathan says. “I’m sorry?—”

“No,” Evren rasps. He shakes his head violently.

“He doesn’t want pity,” I say, moving even closer but not touching him. “He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t want it.” My voice is sharp, a shield for the raw ache in my chest. Evren looks at me, a flicker of gratitude in his stare.

The book in his hands glows with a blinding white light, then clatters to the floor.

The pounding returns, a deep, resonant boom that shakes the very foundations of the chamber.

The obsidian floor cracks. A fissure of pure, silver light spreads from the centre of the room, branching out like lightning.

“Move!” Verik yells, shoving me back as the floor breaks apart.

A circular section of the mosaic sinks into the ground, revealing a staircase even older and steeper than the one we came down. It doesn’t spiral. It plummets straight into darkness. The air that rushes up is hot, tasting of raw, ancient magic.

The book rises again and spins around at a dizzying speed. When it stops, it drops to the ground at my feet, changed. Darker, larger, more menacing than a book has any right to be.

“Don’t touch it,” Dathan says as I bend to pick it up. “I think we just found the Tenebris Vinculum.”

“You mean, you think it just found us,” I reply, staring at the black cover with a solitary eye that blinks slowly as if waking up from a deep slumber.